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Beware: Weak Shared Office Security

September 23, 2019

In an age where virtual companies seem to be the norm, shared office space is one way to provide a physical presence without spending a lot of money. Personally, I think having a brick and mortar presence lends greater credibility to your firm/company. Having said that, we can't deny that offerings such as WeWork are very popular. However, you better know what you are getting when you use a shared work environment.

As an example, CNET reported that WeWork's weak Wi-Fi security exposed sensitive documents. In May 2015, Teemu Airamo moved his digital media company to a WeWork shared workspace environment and ran a security scan of the Wi-Fi network. "For me, it was pretty much, 'Holy shit,'" he said. He reported the security vulnerabilities to the WeWork community manager. "I said, 'Did you know that we can actually see all this?' he recalled. "The answer was, 'yeah, eh.'" After four years, nothing has changed. The data from other companies is still visible to others on the WeWork network.

Sorry, but that is totally unacceptable. The lesson here is that you should have a provision in your contract that let's you walk away if your data can be exposed to unauthorized companies. Better yet…perhaps connect your own Wi-Fi device so that you can control the security yourself.

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